


Fiona Dexter's Origin Story

by pallasite



Series: Behind the Gloves [72]
Category: Babylon 5, Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Assassination, Backstory, Canon Character of Color, Canon Compliant, Children, Female Character of Color, Fix-It, Gen, Illegitimate Children, Kidnapping, POV Character of Color, Parental Death, Psi Corps, Revenge, Rogue Telepaths, Someone Finally Kills Lee Crawford!, Worldbuilding, secret love affair, telepaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-19 07:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11892606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallasite/pseuds/pallasite
Summary: The fix-it fic explaining Fiona Dexter's backstory.In case you missed it, she's Bester's mother.The prologue ofBehind the Glovesishere- please read!





	Fiona Dexter's Origin Story

**Author's Note:**

> What is this series? Where are the acknowledgements, table of contents and universe timelines? See [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10184558/chapters/22620590).
> 
>  _Behind the Gloves_ is an in-depth series exploring a different side of the Psi Corps from the one presented in canon. This collection of stories presents readers with history, context, and slices of the lives of relatable protagonists covering 150 years of canon history, from the inception of laws that segregated telepaths through the aftermath of the Telepath War. By providing readers with the "rest of the story," with a nuanced (and not "one-sided") presentation of facts and events, I demonstrate that canon is misleading, and the truth is not as it seems.
> 
> If you like _Behind the Gloves_ and would like to send me an email, I can be reached at counterintuitive at protonmail dot com. Do you have questions? Would you like to tell me what you like about this project? Email me!

First, I present the story as I am telling it - the version that fixes several substantial storytelling errors in canon. Second, I present canon's version, and an explanation of the changes I made and why.

Kevin Vacit met Ninon (pronounced Ninõn) Davion on a trip to San Diego for EA security (more on that trip in another chapter). He was second-in-command of the Authority, working under Lee Crawford, and she was assigned to the mission as a telepath working in EA security. By the end of the trip, they had entered into a secret romantic and sexual relationship.

She became one of the few people to know he was secretly a telepath, although she, like so many others, couldn't feel this directly.

Their relationship lasted about seven years, until she had to marry someone else. That marriage - arranged - was brought about rather quickly when she discovered she was pregnant. Of course her husband (a telepath, a required by law) would know the child wasn't his, but such occurrences weren't especially uncommon in the Authority - the father of the baby, she explained, was a very strong telepath, but they weren't close enough genetic matches to be approved for marriage. It was off between her and him, she promised him, and it was. Kevin couldn't risk exposure of his true identity - and that he was a telepath - after all the years he'd spent passing as a normal to get in the high position he was in.

Two months after the baby - Fiona Davion - was born, in 2156, Ninon was killed by normals in the line of duty. The Centauri had landed, and violence against telepaths (unseen at such levels since 2115) had broken out across the EA. Ninon, as an agent of the Authority (now the Corps), had been sent to help quell the riots, and never made it home.

Kevin was devastated, but he couldn't show it. Still, Crawford knew they had been close, and sympathized with Kevin's loss of a friend. Of course, it had been much more than that. He and Ninon had only been able to sneak a few days together each year, but they were the brightest moments of his life. And now she was gone. At least, he told himself, she had died doing what she loved, fighting for the people she loved even more.

Within a week of her death, he and now-Director of the Corps Lee Crawford had set out to meet the Centauri ambassador. They never got that far - the car was ambushed, and Crawford was fatally shot. Kevin and the others tried to rescue him, but he died on the scene.

Kevin felt a telepathic presence, one he hadn't felt in many years - Monkey.

In that moment, they had a short telepathic conversation. Monkey was shocked that Kevin had become second only to Crawford in the MRA-now-Corps - and was even more shocked that Kevin felt sympathy for Crawford, the architect of the EA Master Plan to Oppress The Telepaths. On a more personal level, he was still angry that Kevin had left him and the Resistance - and had become, instead, the heir-apparent to the very institutions Monkey had spent his whole adult life fighting. He asked Kevin to give up that life, to join him once more - but Kevin refused. Monkey swore that in revenge, he would kidnap Fiona, and raise her to be everything her father refused to be.

True to his word - and with a much better funded and organized operation behind him now - Monkey followed through on his threat. His associates located the baby and kidnapped her, and Monkey renamed her Fiona Temple - and though Kevin was indeed appointed Director of the Corps by the Senate, he could do little to rescue the girl. If he devoted too much time, energy and money to finding one particular kidnapped telepath baby, he would raise suspicions about his background, and he couldn't risk it.

Kevin had no choice but to let her go. He wanted her to be in the Corps, with him, where he could look after her (even if from afar, since it couldn't be known that she was his daughter), but at least she would be safe.

It wasn't to be, and Monkey raised her instead, in his image - to be even better than him, he hoped. And when Monkey died, he left her in charge of the Underground.

After Monkey's death, Fiona found a message for her. In the vid, Monkey told her that her father (named Kevin) had been a telepath, and that he, Monkey, had raised her father just as he had raised her. Monkey said he knew nothing of her mother's identity (other than that she was also a telepath). Kevin, Monkey told Fiona, had asked him (Monkey) to take her and raise her, to protect her from the Corps. Kevin, he said, had been absolutely clear about that. He'd asked Monkey to raise her, so she would be raised outside the Corps - free.

Fiona believed it. Why wouldn't she?

Thirty-three years after Ninon's death and Fiona's kidnapping, when Kevin ordered the raid on the Dexters' bases and the destruction of the Underground, he still hoped against all odds that she could be saved, that she could be brought into the Corps. But she and her husband, Matthew Dexter, committed suicide, so Kevin's hope now rested instead in his infant grandson. When the baby was found safe in the cellar of nearby farmhouse, he brought little Stephen Kevin Dexter back to the Corps, swearing that the child would never know his true ancestry (for his own good), and that he would have the life in the Corps that his mother should have had. He erased the child's biological records in the Corps database, and renamed him - he would be a child of the Corps in every possible sense. And, mostly from afar, Kevin looked after the boy until his death in 2203.

\-----

Canon's version:

There is a scene in the beginning of Dark Genesis showing Kevin, at four, with his dying mother in the cave. Then there's nothing more about Kevin till he walks into Crawford's office for an interview, and Crawford talks about his impressive educational history.

There's a line on p. 66-67 that that Monkey is taking "the kid" with him so Blood won't "drag him off to some fascist training camp," and remarking that he "doesn't even test as a teep". But the only "kid" we see living with them appears to be _a different kid_ \- Blood can feel his blocks, and they call him James.

I think Keyes meant this kid to be Kevin... I think?

From p. 56:

Blood: "Since when did you start picking up strays?"

Monkey: "Since when did we stop?" Monkey growled, uncharacteristically indignant. "He was just wandering the street with an old Indian woman, real low level, but on the wind, all right. I tried to get her to come, too, but she just pushed the boy off on me. I scanned her, but she got pissed off, and I didn't learn much. I think she found the boy in the desert a few months ago."

Oh, so between the ages of four and six he just lived randomly wandering in the desert, and then some random Indian woman picked him up, but doesn't give a shit about him, and handed him off to the first random outlaw - white outlaw, no less - who came along and expressed interest in taking the boy.

Nothing wrong with this writing _at all_.

And if Keyes intended this kid to be Kevin, wouldn't anyone in this scene have asked him his name - and wouldn't he say "Kevin"?! They never even ask. To make it even more confusing, in the scene on p. 20-22 that shows Kevin and his mother in the cave, his name _still isn't given_. So the first time we meet anyone named "Kevin Vacit" (or Kevin anything) is when Kevin walks into Crawford's office.

Maybe he was born James, maybe Monkey and Blood called him "James"...? (Maybe Blood enrolls him in school as "James," to hide his identity? Although why he couldn't still have the first name "Kevin" makes little sense, since he's an orphan anyway. It's all unclear.)

Assuming James is someone else (though I think he's intended to be the same person), we don't find out that Kevin was raised by Monkey until p. 122-123, _halfway through the book_ , when this scene happens after Monkey and his associates have killed Crawford, and Monkey makes telepathic contact with Kevin when he sees him (Kevin) 'casting a telepathic projection to Crawford of a Centauri, so the dying man could believe he'd finally seen an alien. Remember, Kevin is about fifty-two here, and even if he and James are the same person, he and Monkey have apparently had no contact since Kevin left Monkey, which was before college:

_That was damn nice of you, Kid._

            The voice came from the darkness; Kevin couldn't pinpoint quite where. If he concentrated he probably could locate the source, but it wasn't worth the effort. He wiped his eyes.

 _He deserved it_ , he sent back. _Despite it all, he deserved that, at least, to see a Centauri._

_I don't think I've ever seen you cry, Kid._

_I haven't cried - haven't cried since my mother died, holding me._

_And now you get sentimental about some normal - not just any normal, but the bastard who was responsible for Psi Corps._

_Monkey, you don't care about anything as long as you can blow things up._

_I didn't see you objecting. You could have stopped me anytime. I'm strong, but there's never been anybody like you, Kid. Even Blood never recognized you. I'm the only one who has ever known, and that's only 'cause I raised you._

_No, there was one other,_ Kevin sent. _Which reminds me..._

_(slight resignation) You gonna do me now, Kid? You probably could, but I wish you wouldn't._

_No. This has all worked out pretty well. You have the underground, and now I have Psi Corps. No, I need a favor._ He sent Monkey the images. A woman, an infant.

_Holy shit. When did you ever have time to get a baby on someone?_

            Kevin smiled at the bittersweet memory of precious hours and days stolen here and there over the last ten years. [Except he and Ninon met in 2148, which was eight years earlier.] Ninon had been required to marry a teep, of course, and Kevin had never been able to tell anyone but her his own true nature. He had worked too hard and too long to cover it.

            She had understood. Ninon had been the greatest risk of his life, but she had been worth it. And the miracle that she had had his child, so shortly before he lost her...

 _There was time_ , was all Monkey got.

_You don't want your kid in Psi Corps._

_No. Some unpleasant things are going to happen in Psi Corps in the next few years, and I won't be able to protect her if she is there. But you can protect her._

_I'm gettin' pretty old, Kid._

_Not too old. Her name is Fiona. She's only two months old. Take good care of her._

_I'll fight Psi Corps, Kid._

_(shrug) I don't care. Just don't get my daughter killed._

_What kind of game are you playing? I don't understand this at all._

_Don't worry about it. Just do what you do. Help the rogues all you want. I may even be able to help you from time to time. But if you get caught - if you get caught, I may not be able to help you._

_You were always a strange one, Kid. Good luck._

_Good luck to you, too, Monkey. And Monkey?_

_Ook?_

_Don't tell her about me. She can't know._

            And Monkey was gone. Kevin stayed with Lee until the police and the ambulances got there, and after. He touched the tears on his face and wondered at them.

            "Goodbye, Lee," he whispered. "You showed him. You showed the bastard."

            Then he straightened, and went out to do his job.

\-----

(And that's it - in the next section, Fiona's an adult. She does get the message from Monkey after he's gone. But that's it.)

Now.

Apparently, Monkey isn't the only one who "doesn't understand this at all."

For one, those "unpleasant things" that are going to happen in the Corps don't happen _for generations_. That line refers to the Department Sigma experiments, and Vacit doesn't even realize this is necessary and set the plans in motion to bring this about until after the trip to Venus and encounter with the Vorlon there - _thirty-two years later._

Next, he fully expects to be appointed the next Director - and as Director, of course he could keep such "unpleasant things" (or others) from happening to her. And all of those things happened to _volunteers_ , anyway.

If he doesn't want his daughter killed, why would he hand her over to the dangerous outlaw who raised him so many years ago, with whom he's had no contact since, a man who "doesn't care about anything, as long as he can blow stuff up"? That's safer than a life in a sheltered elite cadre in Geneva - with Kevin as the Director?!

And then, if life in the Corps is so dangerous, why would he want his grandson in the Corps? The baby was born after Kevin and Natasha had gone to Venus and met with the Vorlon. He  _actually_ knew in 2189 about the experiments that would have to happen in the Corps, even if this was still a long way off. But he wants his grandson in the Corps. Not just because he's mostly destroyed the Underground so there's nowhere else for the boy to go - because he actually wants this.

And guess what? None of those "bad things" that were going to happen in the Corps later have anything to do with Bester's upbringing! He's not "unsafe" because of Department Sigma! None of that comes into Bester's story until, much, much later (e.g. as a Psi Cop, he's involved in trying to stop the leaks out of Department Sigma that threaten normal and telepath lives).

The version of events I wrote above - the version I'm going with with _Behind the Gloves_ \- not only makes the character motivations make more sense, it also thematically echoes future events.

One of the recurring writing problems in Dark Genesis is that material occurs entirely out time period - here, Kevin's talking about "bad things" that were going to happen in the Corps in the next few years, and elsewhere, characters preach Corps ideology _generations_ before these cultural points developed. Just because telepaths in the Corps think a certain way in the 2250s doesn't mean that telepaths in the MRA think this same way over a hundred years earlier!

But more on that later. I think I've reconstructed as much of Fiona's origins as I can.


End file.
